Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day017.04
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
Q. Is this not exactly what happened with the state of
Israel? Millions of these people were taken and dumped in
Israel, so to speak, although they did it voluntarily? It
was an uprooting and a geographical resettlement.
A. The number of people coming into Israel of course came in
gradually and there was a structure and an organization to
arrange for and assist their reception.
Q. Have you seen in the German files references to the
planning for the Madagascar settlement? In other words,
the necessary retraining, the agricultural specialists and
everything being set up by the Foreign Ministry and by the
German Navy, the Naval staff?
. P-28
A. No. I did not see some setting up retraining. I saw them
planning to take all the property and who would be in
charge of gathering the Jews, and that it would be an SS
state at the other end, but I certainly did not see, as
part of the files on Madagascar, retraining. There
was
some toleration of Zionist groups in Germany setting
up
agricultural camps in the prewar period when they were
trying to encourage the emigration of Jews, be it to
Palestine or anywhere else.
Q. Adolf Hitler repeatedly referred to the Madagascar
solution, did he not, from 1938 in the Goebbels
diaries
right through until July 24th 1942 in the table talk?
A. The Madagascar plan is a concrete plan, in which
people
are actually working on it. It is the period of June
to
September 1940, but there are references to Madagascar
earlier and later. It is an idea that had floated in
a
number of anti-semitic pamphlets and the Jewish expert
of
the German Foreign Office in fact, who sort of arrived
at
this on his own, claimed that he got the idea from
reading
one of these pamphlets, so it was an idea in the air.
This was one of the sort of anti-semitic fantasies
that
this problem would disappear if all of these Jews
could be
sent to the most distant island they could conceive
of.
Q. Out of mind, out of sight. Would you agree that it
was
Hitler's pipe dream?
A. I would not call it pipe dream, because I think, if
. P-29
England had surrendered, they would have tried to do
it.
They would have tried to implement it just as they
tried
to implement the Lublin reservation plan and just as
they
tried and succeeded in implementing the death camp
plans.
Q. Have you seen indications in the negotiations with
France
over the peace settlement with France, the armistice
negotiations, that there was an attempt by the Germans
to
secure permission for the Madagascar plan because
Madagascar was a French territory?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought it was British.
A. No, French.
MR IRVING: Madagascar was French but it became British
after
May 26th 1942, my Lord, or thereabouts, when we did
the
usual thing.
A. They sent people to the French colonial ministry to
get
information on Madagascar. They certainly did not
need
French permission, and I am not sure how much this was
a
topic in armistice negotiations that were going on
after
the armistice, I do not know how much that was a topic
between them.
Q. You think it was a totally impracticable proposition,
the
idea of sending 6 million Jews, or whatever it was, to
an
island the size of Madagascar?
A. I think they would have attempted it, and I think the
results would have been disastrous.
Q. Why would they have been disastrous?
. P-30
A. Because I think a large percentage of the people sent
there would have perished.
Q. I think that the Jews are a very sturdy people. They
have
shown that by their forthrightness in Palestine, have
they
not?
A. I think the conditions under which they arrived there,
an
island which the documents said clearly was to be an
SS
state, would not have been anything remotely similar
to
the conditions of an attempted and organized reception
of
refugees in Palestine after 1945.
Q. The population of Madagascar at that time was about 1
million?
A. I could not say.
Q. The population of Madagascar now is over 13 million?
A. I could not say.
Q. So it could have housed that number of people quite
easily? It is a country the size of Germany, is that
correct?
A. It would depend on the circumstances and indeed
bringing
Jews in, and all of their property taken, and under SS
custody, I do not think one could say that they would
have
been housed easily. I think it would have been
lethal.
Q. If Hitler's intention was to exterminate all the Jews
systematically, then why would he have had a pipe
dream of
sending the Jews to a country like Madagascar where
they
would have survived?
. P-31
A. This is where we get to the interpretational issues of
the
intentionalist and functionalist. I do not believe at
that point that he intended to destroy the Jews
systematically. He wanted a problem to disappear.
Q. When did the intention then develop? This is
important
I think.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Let us get on to that.
A. As I say in my report, my feeling is that there were
two
separate phases of decision making. Both of them
stretch
out over a period of time.
MR IRVING: With particular reference to Hitler, please?
A. It is an incremental decision making process. We have
in
the Spring of 1941, in preparation for Barbarossa, a
number of his statements about what kind of war this
is
going to be, a war of destruction, a killing of what
he
calls Judao- Bolshevik intelligentsia and this kind of
thing. This results in proposals coming to him, one
of
which is the creation of the Einsatzgruppen in its
arrangement with the army or logistical support, the
Commissar order, and that in the opening weeks of the
war
this led to the selective killing of adult male Jews
in
the regions that the Einsatzgruppen enter.
Q. Can I halt you there for a moment and say, when he
talks
about the Judao-Bolshevik enemy, which half of that
adjective weighs strongest in his mind, the Bolshevik
or
Judao?
. P-32
A. I think for him it is a package deal, but in terms of
what
is wrong with Bolshevism is that it is the latest
manifestation of the Jewish threat, so the Jewish
issue is
the prime one and the Bolshevik is the current
manifestation of this Jewish threat as he understands
it,
because he has seen previous manifestations are the
French
revolution and the liberals. Christianity is the
first
Jewish threat.
Q. There have been more recent manifestations, have there
not, for example in the Spanish Civil War?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, this is getting a bit
discursive.
Can we just pin it down a little bit?
MR IRVING: I am trying to pin it down.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, I know we are
interrupting an answer and I want you to resume it,
but
can we just anchor it to particular dates? The date
that
is in my mind, and I would be interested to see the
document if possible, is the 25th May, and I think it
was
1940 rather than 41.
A. The May 25th document is the Himmler guidelines for
the
treatment of the peoples of Eastern Europe, in which
he
wants to reauthorize the ethnic cleansing from the
western
territories, which Frank and Goring had managed to
whittle
down.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that not, in a sense, the start of it
all?
A. No, that is still in the ethnic cleansing phase. That
is
. P-33
the document in which Himmler is still referring to a
total extermination as unGerman and impossible.
MR IRVING: I was going point that out, yes.
A. It is the following year, 1941 in the spring, when
Hitler
begins to talk about this war of destruction in the
East,
the destruction of the Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia,
that leads to the selective killing of adult male Jews
in
the opening five or six weeks of Barbarossa.
MR IRVING: Can I halt you there and say which documents?
Are
you referring to the Kommissar order then?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at some of these documents?
A. We are referring to a collection of documents, the
agreement between the military and the Einsatzgruppen
in
which the Einsatzgruppen will get its instructions
from
the SS but its logistic support from the military.
Q. Is it not possible to argue that these are purely
military
measures at this time?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at the document? I really do
want to look at this document, the Kommissar order.
MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will excuse me for interrupting.
You will find three relevant documents cited, or
rather
utterances by Hitler in a military or a semi-military
context on pages 55 and 56 of Dr Longerich's first
report. They are all three of them in March 1941
before
Barbarossa starts. Perhaps Professor Browning might
be
given that, so that he can see it.
. P-34
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is quite important because, if
this is too broad brush, it is perhaps not as helpful
as
it could be.
MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, because I shall want to draw
attention to the military nature of these orders.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do so please, but let us do it by
reference
to the documents.
MR IRVING: They are criminal, there is no question, and
they
are Draconian, but they are military.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that. So 55 and 56 of the
first
part of Longerich, Mr Rampton?
MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
A. Yes. I think, if we look at the very first one, in
fact
he makes clear that his campaign has both a military
and
an ideological side. As he says, the coming campaign
is
more than just a struggle of arms. It will also lead
to a
confrontation of two world views. Then he goes on, it
is
does not suffice to defeat the enemy army, Jewish and
Bolshevik intelligentsia must be eliminated. So this
campaign from the very beginning is to be conceived as
more than a conventional war between armies. It has a
strong ideological element and that ideological
element
relates to race, and particularly to Jews, and that
tenor
I think is very strong in his spring of 1941
declarations. As I say, when we then look at what was
the
. P-35
result of that, if one looks at the Einsatzgruppen
reports, the overwhelming bulk of the victims who were
shot in the first five or six weeks are ----
Q. Described as Jews?
A. --- as male Jews. They kept some communist
functionaries. They regret, in a sense, most of the
communist functionaries seem to have disappeared, the
Jews
have not, and that these then are the main target
group.
Q. If this document refers to the Judao-Bolshevik
intelligentsia, this does not explain why large
numbers of
thousands of ordinary Jews are being taken off trains
or
taken out of the towns and taken out of the country
side
and machine gunned into pits They are not the
intelligentsia in any way. This document covers the
intelligentsia.
A. No one is saying that this is a hands on micromanaged
order. This is a speech by Hitler in which he is
declaring a set of expectations, and then there are
various preparations made and proposals brought
forward
that, in a sense, cast his vision of a war of
destruction
into concrete terms.
Q. If I could rephrase that document, if this was going
the
other way and the Russians were saying, we are going
to
invade Washington and we are going to destroy the
capitalist intelligentsia, and subsequently very large
atrocities took place and millions of ordinary
Americans
. P-36
being machine gunned into pits, you would not link
those
two facts, would you?
A. I think one could, in the sense that one would say ---
-
Q. Just Americans with bank accounts or otherwise fitted?
A. Well, one, it sets a mood in which destruction of
civilian
populations, killing will not be limited to armed
soldiers.

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.